


Be Mine

by CopperBeech



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Bottom Crowley (Good Omens), Don't copy to another site, Established Relationship, Exactly What It Says on the Tin, Fan Service, Fluff and Smut, Gratuitous Smut, I just felt like letting it rip, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Ineffably Horny, Just Enough Angst To Save Your Teeth, M/M, Oh but they switch it up, Porn with Feelings, South Downs Cottage (Good Omens), Switching, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Top Aziraphale (Good Omens), Wedding Fluff, Wedding Night, Wedding Planning, gratuitous everything, light on plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-27
Updated: 2019-10-27
Packaged: 2021-01-03 05:23:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21174122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CopperBeech/pseuds/CopperBeech
Summary: “You know you weren’t meant for Heaven any more than I was meant for Hell. I did the kind of mischief that would make people want to ask questions. 'Bout what we’re doing, why we’re here. Why this is called good and that’s called bad. The others, seemed most of them only liked the cruelty… But then, so'd Heaven, didn’t it? Do it this way or die, or Fall and be prey for everyone that Fell with you. Outsourcing. No, angel – we belong here, with green things and fucking and wine and old wise whores and kids trying to make a sound system work.”"I hope that's not part of the ceremony.""Nah. I could put it in if you want."





	Be Mine

**Author's Note:**

> This started out as just a little hot scene that was writing itself in my head when I woke up one morning, when suddenly Crowley rolled over in bed and said something I hadn't expected from him at exactly that juncture, and it turned into a wedding story and galloped away with me. It owes a bit to a delicious piece of fanart I can't find again on Tumblr of the boys dancing in formal wear. If I can ever find it again, I'll link it.
> 
> Also, apparently everyone loves a lover, even stick-up-the-ass Celestial beeyotches. 
> 
> Please brush and floss after reading. There's more hot stuff at the end.
> 
> Come say hello on Tumblr @CopperPlateBeech

This was the way he liked it best, with Crowley underneath him. They would always be distracted with kissing by this time, breathless, lips a little sore but coming back again and again to feed at each other’s mouths. It was one of the most beautiful things you could do with a human corporation, kissing; it could be tender and reverent, or insistent and claiming, invasive or yielding, a coupling in itself, or a love letter, or a silent seal. They would exchange all these things, until Aziraphale eased Crowley onto his back, always remembering the first time (_will you let me? Will you tell me if it’s all right or not? Will you take me into you, receive me, hold me?_), always gentle but unable to hide how much he needed it (_and why should he? The demon loved to be wanted; he’d thought he wasn’t for so long). _

Crowley would wrap gangling legs around his soft middle, heels at the small of his back, head tipped to one side, sometimes showing a small line of filigree bruises along his neck where he loved the angel to bite, to suck. The moment when the fleshy head of the angel’s cock pressed thick against his resistance always made him hitch a breath; Aziraphale would pause a moment (_All right, my love?_) feeling Crowley’s body yield and all but pull him in, to lodge forcefully, deep and tight, unmoving, for a long moment, as if trying to make them into one being, before his own body took over and insisted on moving, in a slow rhythm that was like a pavane, drawing back, pressing in.

Crowley would never be anything but pale, with the transparent skin of his redheaded colouring, and a flush always rose up his throat as he rocked his hips in answer, digging in with his heels to say _Yes, now, I want all of you inside me._ His own hard heat would be pressed against the angel’s pillowy stomach – he was always a little slick with anticipation by then – and feeling that would bring the urgency, a shudder of breath that Aziraphale would ride out and resist, not wanting to finish yet. He’d pull back, holding still, while the demon bit his lip and gave little mewling cries that sounded like pain but weren’t, wanting him all the way back inside, sometimes slapping at his flanks until he would relent (_Do you want it all, darling? I’ll give it to you, it’s yours, I’m yours_) and go deep again, rocking, slick, clasped impossibly tight inside his lover, always mouthing a soundless cry as he came. Sometimes Crowley came with him, flooding helplessly over his own almost concave belly – he didn’t think he would ever get enough of the sight; sometimes the angel would take his length in hand, hard by now as warmed stone in a sleeve of silk, coaxing out moisture with his thumb, teasing: _Shall I go faster? Maybe I won’t_ or stroking three four five times quickly and then stopping, tantalizing, over and again until the demon released into his hand with one sharp cry. It always sounded as if he’d been struck, but his face would relax, dissolving into a peace, an innocence that Aziraphale had never seen in the centuries they’d known each other (_no, _he once thought_: I saw it on the walls of Eden, the first time our eyes met, before he learned to hide it, to keep from me what he thought I didn’t want to see, and I let him, the more fool me._) Sometimes Crowley would reach up then and pull him down into a tight embrace while a last few pulses rippled through the angel’s own ebbing cock; sometimes he would rake his fingers through his own juices, and draw signs and sigils down the front of the angel’s soft body, as if marking him for his own. Aziraphale never asked in what lost language of Hell or Heaven he was being sealed; he would only bend to a kiss that was a whispering dance of tongue-tip over half-closed lips, brushing away the locks of scarlet hair that clung to the film of sweat on the demon’s cheek.

They were celestial beings, they could be clean and dry with a thought, but there was a special, sensual tenderness in summoning a towel wrung out with water of just the right heat, daubing the traces off one another’s bodies, feeling the gentleness of each other’s hands; in finally wrapping themselves in the sheets, entangled and drifting in a place that wasn’t sleep or waking, tracing each other’s shapes with fingertips, the line of cheek or throat with brushing lips.

Crowley slept easily, and sometimes, eventually, he would, feeling more sinuous and light-boned in the angel’s arms as some reflection of his serpent nature emerged in repose; sometimes he would rise on one elbow to gaze at what he’d wanted so long and thought he couldn’t have, _silly angel, why did you let them keep us apart all those centuries?, – I could be furious, except it’s you._ He knew what they’d been contending with, why they had both pretended away what was between them, getting ratty and shut-down by turns over the centuries, coming close, never reaching. Neither would ever forget the final, brittle terror of knowing they were dealing with beings who intended their deaths, with only a desperate, preposterous ruse on their side. They’d lain awake all night after it succeeded, long sobered from the champagne at the Ritz and now a little drunk again on Crowley’s whiskey, still clothed, facing each other on Crowley’s ocean of bed where they’d stumbled by some wordless, common consent. Half propped up on pillows, passing a bottle back and forth between them, they’d relived it for one another: _Michael gave me such a look, I wondered if she saw through it, but if she did she didn’t say –_

_\-- I thought, they wanted to do this to _you_ and I almost took Gabriel out, right struggle to stop myself – _

_\-- When they hit me, I mean you, it hurt so much, is it all right now? Let me see, _ and at some point they were touching, the golden eyes were looking into his with naked longing, he’d pressed his lips between the brows then, and arms had crept tentatively around him as if afraid to take more. _More_ would come later.

Today, instead of sleeping, Crowley propped himself up almost exactly as he had that night, slitted eyes looking into his the same way, and with a little of the same questioning. Aziraphale raised a fingertip to his lips, stroked.

“You have something to say.” He knew that look by now.

The demon was silent, hesitating.

“Don’t pretend.”

“Marry me,” said Crowley. He immediately looked a little startled that he’d said it, and apprehensive.

“My dear.”

Aziraphale touched his lips to the demon’s long, knobby fingers.

“‘S that yes or no?”

“I thought we were already as married as two beings like us can be.”

Crowley pulled toward him, bringing their cheeks together. “I want a ring. Or a billboard. Or a tattoo. _I belong to Aziraphale forever_ and _Many waters will not part us_ and you, you always there. Say you’ll always be there.”

“You still remember when I wouldn’t leave with you.”

The demon‘s silence told him he was right..

“We couldn’t have lived with ourselves.”

“No.” Crowley’s lips were moving against his hair, tickling where they stirred the short locks. “You were right in the end, 'course. But – “

“I was unkind. I hated myself for it.”

“We were afraid.” The demon pulled back to look at him again. “Didn’t know what we could do then, did we?” A feather stroke up his thigh gave a double meaning to that sentence. “So? Marry me, beautiful? Rings? Silly flowers? A really inedible cake? Little cottage?”

“There will be _no_ inferior cake at _our_ wedding, if you please.”

“So there _will_ be our wedding.”

“Dear boy. Who exactly has the authority to marry us? I stumble on that one. Though I must say the idea is growing on me. Yes, do let’s. Wedding night. It has a certain thrill to it.”

“I’m noticing.”

“I can’t think if you do that.”

“You’re already thinking too much. Let me fix it.”

“Insatiable.”

* * *

The idea did grow on him. He noticed Crowley looking at the placards in estate agents’ windows, or the displays of vintage jewelry at antiques dealers’ where Aziraphale could never resist entering to sift through boxes of old books.

Once he entered Crowley‘s flat to find the sound system pouring out a saxophone solo – he recognized Shostakovich’s _Waltz No. 2,_ not a composer he usually favored, but this was a melody as unctuous and lush as a crème Anglaise, an orchestration full of shameless ritardandos and crescendos, and Crowley caught him up without a word and began to steer him around the minimally furnished, extruded sitting-room with the certainty of someone who’d been practicing. “‘l have to lead,” he said, “you can only do the gavotte,” and the room tilted a little around them while the angel tried not to trip over his feet, until their rhythm smoothed and he found he was dancing with Crowley as they danced in bed, knowing each other, ready for one another’s advances and retreats. When the last notes had sounded the demon didn’t seem able to decide whether to laugh or kiss him, so they did both, and a good deal after that.

Once a small box of miniature _gateaux _arrived from his favorite patissier, a half dozen, each distinct, perfectly adorned with tiny decorations, and a note in Crowley’s surprisingly graceful hand: _Tell me which you like. No inferior cakes, angel. Promise._

And one morning Crowley roared off in the Bentley and was gone all day, so late that the angel actually began to fret, wondering if he’d said something or done something – there had been so many times over the centuries, Crowley sulking away the last half of the 1800’s because Aziraphale had been frightened for him, for them both, and had said _fraternising_ when what he meant was _wanting to love you, it could get us both killed, we’ve protected each other since the Garden, don’t you understand?_ But then the familiar sound of the demon’s tread on the spiral stairs followed the chime of a door that would have been locked to anyone else, and one long arm wrapped around him while with the other hand Crowley tossed a folder of photographs down on the titchy kitchen table, saying “Have a look, it’s ours if we want it, there’s a walled garden and the front windows face East.”

It looked perfect – a cottage with phlox tumbling over a garden wall of weathered fieldstone like an old coat flung over a balustrade, the kitchen with a southern exposure, restored crown molding, shelves built into the walls all around the sitting room, all things the angel loved. “Someplace that’s just ours, if you like it,” said Crowley. “Three guesses who put me onto it.”

“You know I abhor guessing games, Crowley.”

“Did I?” From Crowley’s expression, it was clear he did, but he refused to answer a direct question, and since the angel knew he loved to be maddening, Aziraphale was maddening right back and refused to coax him, which was one of the ways they got on.

And there was still the one unanswered question.

* * *

In the end, though, it was obvious.

“My dears, it was perfectly evident from the moment I first saw you together that you were meant for each other. I have the Sight, you know. And if I hadn’t, the way you were holding hands. A woman knows, at least my kind of woman.”

She had come up to London to meet them, and handled Aziraphale’s best tea set like any _grande dame._

“So – you’ll do it?”

“Oh, ducks, I wouldn’t miss the chance. We’d all been wondering when. It’ll be a job to get the Sergeant into a proper suit, and he won’t dance, but I can bring him round. He’s at least stopped asking people questions about their nipples.”

She represented humankind at its purest and most lovably foolish and wise, and there was really no better choice; the registry office would issue her a licence for this one ceremony, and the woman who’d spun whole worlds of fantasy into reality for the bereaved and bereft of greater London, salving their loneliness, easing their grief, would have the poise and eloquence to suit the occasion. Aziraphale smiled at her hennaed hair, still not as vivid as Crowley’s, remembering the blonde wigs of the Roman whores and their wisecracking, knowledgeable company in the grittier cauponas.

“And it’ll be _lovely _having you for neighbours when you come down. The Sergeant has his hobbies, but I do love a good chin-wag.”

Aziraphale’s eyes widened and he turned to Crowley, who looked simply… smug.

“That cottage had stood empty far too long. I can’t think why, but it’s perfect for you.”

The demon had stolen another march on him. He couldn’t be cross, but he would chaff him tonight in bed, and impose penances.

* * *

When they'd sorted their business at the Registry office -- after centuries of sly miracles giving them identities in everything from Roman citizenship rolls to online databases, it was a doddle - Crowley offered her a lift to Victoria.

“Oh, that’s all right, ducks. I came to town with a shopping list – you can’t get the kind of – well, I have some shopping. Be in touch soon, loves.”

She kissed them both glancingly at the angle of the jaw, leaving a scent of White Diamonds and a faint smear of Jungle Red.

* * *

Two weeks before the wedding date, in the still watches when it seems the whole earth lies asleep, Aziraphale woke (the idea of sleeping was still new, and awakening more so), bewildered, wondering what had roused him. The Mayfair flat was silent, no sound penetrating from the street.

Crowley’s back was turned to him, a long, bony anatomy in the filtered light from the streetlamps outside. The angel realized his length was shaking with sobs, his face pressed into the pillow to muffle them, hitching and trembling.

“Crowley. _Crowley – _what is it? Are you all right?”

There was no answer, only a deeper catch of breath.

“Is something wrong, dear? Tell me.” Slow gasps, a demon trying to find his voice. “Are you – having second thoughts? Do you not want to do this?” A shake of the head then, distinct enough to carry meaning, and a blind reach of one hand to dig fingers almost painfully into the angel’s thigh; then Crowley turned and clutched him, hands skating all over as if to prove that every part of him was still there, face buried against his collarbone. He seemed to be speaking, but it was a muffled, frantic babble and Aziraphale couldn’t make it out.

“My dear – slower. It’s all right. It’s all right. I’ve got you.”

The hectic clasp loosened a little. Aziraphale stroked the long locks, as if he were gentling a horse or a cat.

“I – I – “ Crowley shifted to yank off the pillowslip and loudly, gracelessly blow his nose into it, flinging it aside and bringing his forehead to rest on the angel’s shoulder. “I was dreaming. About the time I thought you were dead, really dead, and the whole world went – went dark around me – “ His breathing caught again, leveled. “And in the dream it happened again, not like what really happened, they came for you and took you while I was waiting for you – in all the wedding clothes, holding the rings – “ A few more heaving breaths. Aziraphale found his hand and twined their fingers. “And then Hell came for me and they said, _your punishment will be to live and remember that you saw him die, _ and – “

“It’s all right, dearest. I’m here. Shhh.”

A few last sobbing breaths before a deeper, calmer one. “You don’t know. You don’t know how they _hurt_ one another down there. It’s sport. Why I was so glad to stay up here – was ready to do anything I could to stay here, even before you, angel – sometimes I wake up at night, and – you _sleep _now, you never used to sleep – and you look so _defenceless_ and I’m afraid we can’t have this, they won’t let us have it, that we’ll be punished for trying to be happy…”

”Ssshhh, darling. It was a dream. Everything is going to be fine.” Aziraphale pulled up the duvet, Crowley was always cold, settled the denuded pillow back under his head and held him, rocking in an almost imperceptible rhythm.

They had been untouched, unspoken to by Heaven and Hell alike for most of a year, but it would always follow them. He couldn’t know what Crowley had suffered in the Fall, or after. That was a closed book that the demon refused to open, and he’d learned long ago not to ask about it.

Crowley whimpered a few times, and fell into a profound sleep just before the early dawn. The sun climbed to burn in the windows, London traffic began to hum and clang far below, and Aziraphale held his demon, afraid to move and risk wakening him again, until he too fell into a hazy sleep.

When he woke Crowley was in the kitchen, padding in bare feet to make some of the thick, dreadful coffee he loved, and he turned wordlessly to embrace the angel in one long bone-cracking squeeze, and they said nothing more of it.

* * *

On the second drive to the Downs – they were exploring the businesses in the nearby town, setting up the kitchen, arranging the books that had been languishing in boxes in the back of A.Z. Fell’s for lack of room on the shop shelves – Madame Tracy introduced some of her nearest neighbours at the far end of the road from them (“very open-minded, dears, you know I wouldn’t have any other sorts of friends”) and now they had more wedding guests, including three children, two bracketing Adam’s age. Humanity was beginning to enfold them in a way it hadn’t when managing humanity’s fate had been their job. In some ways, Aziraphale felt as if he’d never met a human before breaking with Heaven. They were foolish, kind, ignorant, helpful, petty and aspiring, and he loved them. Although the children did shout rather loudly.

“You’re still rubbish at that coin trick, you know,” said the demon, rather fondly. “Dunno why you keep trying to do it.”

“Trying to work without miracles, speaking of which, I saw how you tied that older boy’s laces together.”

“He was laughing at you.”

“You needn't rescue me from _children,_ dear.”

“If you don’t remember Warlock’s party, I do.”

* * *

A note appeared on his desk at the shop, on expensive-looking linen stationery of a pale gray-lavender colour, in a translucent green ink.

_News travels. You may have broken with your family, but we are still family. We did not know how things lay, then. I am choosing to let you know you are safe. There will be no interference._

In place of a signature there was a deftly inked image of a long cross-hilted sword, such as one sees in classical paintings of the Archangel Michael. It was as close to an apology for trying to extinguish him with Hellfire as he was going to get. Heaven considers itself in the business of granting forgiveness, not asking it.

If Crowley had received anything similar, he didn’t mention it. Aziraphale suspected not. He almost tossed the note away, then laid it carefully inside his locking drawer.

* * *

Late on the morning of the wedding Aziraphale heard a repeated, loud, hard pounding at the cottage door. He’d already sent the caterer’s boy to the Shadwells’; who was this now? He opened the door, to a peremptory order of “Stop right there! Don’t walk under, it’s bad luck.”

Anathema Device’s booted feet were on the rung of a ladder, toes facing him at eye level, and as he stopped short – it was unlikely he’d fit past, anyway – the pounding resumed overhead, vibrating the framed prints from _Culpeper’s Herbal_ that Crowley had arranged on the walls of the foyer.

“All right, that’s got it. I’m coming down.”

Somehow she could get up and down a ladder in the kind of schoolmarmish, three-quarter-length skirt she favored. A sturdy claw-hammer was in her right hand and a box of masonry nails protruded from her jacket pocket. As she folded the ladder, the angel stepped out, looked up and saw a large horseshoe nailed flush into the mortar above the lintel.

“Takes care of any unwanted influences,” said the American witch, carrying the ladder back toward their garden shed (he hadn’t explored that; he’d left the outdoors to Crowley). “Sorry, should have knocked. Everyone else is setting up, but I wanted to take care of that. Part of our present.”

“Very kindly thought of, my dear.”

“Pepper rode with the Youngs, and the other boys came down with us. I’d better go see what they’re into. The flowers just came.”

She surprised him with a kiss on the cheek. “All the happiness.”

* * *

“Everyone’s here, dears.”

Tracy was wearing a garishly flowered dress, wobbly heels that looked like they must hurt, and a little too much powder. She was completely perfect.

“Mrs. Curzon took charge of making sure the pavilion was set up properly, and her boy and your young friend Brian are setting up the tables and the speakers for later – did you give me that disc with the music? Oh, right in my bag. – Here, let me get that. I’m used to helping gentlemen get dressed.”

A haze of perfume wafted over Aziraphale as she worked the silver links through his cuffs.

“The Tadfield people can stay here with us, I’ve done up both of these bedrooms." It was hard to miss. Anathema's theodolite was already propped in one corner, next to a ridiculously ornate cheval glass; apparently she intended to use the trip to stay in practice. "The Curzons and DebJean are taking the children – “ Deb and Jean were tweedy, brisk women, fond of birdwatching, whose short iron-grey haircuts made them difficult to tell apart. ”The Sergeant’s a bear, but he’s missed the company, I can tell. – There. Now _you, _don’t you look elegant. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you wearing white – it’s quite dramatic. There’s something about a tall, lean man in formal wear, my, Mr. Fell, you have made a catch. What a change to see you out of that old suit, black’s really quite striking on you.”

She stood back and looked at them as if they were her particular handiwork.

“Come on into the parlour then, it'll only be a moment. That young Wensley saved the sound system from Mr. Pulsifer – he’s a quick lad, seemed to know exactly how to fix the settings on the laptop. And Brian, you’d think he was no more clever than God made him to hear him talk, but he’s been taking the loveliest photos. He calls it a candid album.”

“We’re doomed,” said Crowley.

“I’ll just duck out then. I need to go over this one more time. I’ll send the children for you, we’ve already rehearsed them once more just to be sure they get it right.”

Crowley silently put his hand in the angel’s as she retreated. His cufflinks were paired wings, the angel’s tiny coiled serpents. They were both thinking the same thought: The long, dangerous game they’d played for so many centuries was done; they were at liberty to start another story, one that began, as the first one had, in a garden.

“Did you notice anything when you stepped through our door, dear?” Aziraphale thought to ask.

“Funny you mention. Oddest little tingle, why? Thought maybe it went with the occasion.”

“Anathema gave us a horseshoe. It’s supposed to ward away Hellish influences.”

“Well, they kicked me out. Might be one for the Guinness Book of Records, booted out of Heaven _and_ Hell.”

“Just that little bit of mischief remaining, perhaps.”

“Mmmhm. Was kind of nice, like a needle shower. – You _do_ look – hm.” Crowley slipped arms around him.

“Ceremony first, dear.”

“You know you weren’t meant for Heaven any more than I was meant for Hell. I did the kind of mischief that would make people want to ask _questions._ 'Bout what we’re doing, why we’re here. Why this is called good and that’s called bad. The others, seemed most of them only liked the cruelty… But then, so did Heaven, didn’t it? Do it this way or die, or Fall and be prey for everyone that Fell with you. Outsourcing. No, angel – we belong here, with green things and fucking and wine and old wise whores and kids trying to make a sound system work.”

“I hope that’s not part of the ceremony.”

“Nah. I could put it in if you want.”

There was a knock at the door, and Pepper’s voice.

“Are we ready, my dear?”

Crowley gave his arm.

“Be mine?”

“I already am. Let’s go make it official.”

They stepped out, both pairs of hands clasped between them.

* * *

“… you are my husband to love and cherish always. Your joys will be my joys; your griefs; my griefs…”

He couldn’t remember when he had realized Crowley loved him, or that he’d come to love the demon in return. _Darling, you’ve been more patient with me than I ever deserved, but I’ll love you forever. _He’d been skittish, and fearful, and Crowley, the citizen of Hell, had been faithful and loyal. He hardly deserved this, but he was going to hold on to it with both hands.

“I will never mean to do you hurt. I will atone for the hurt I do cause...”

Pepper and Wensley, carrying heaps of flowers almost too high to see over, stood to either side of them, trying bravely not to fidget as Madame Tracy brought the ceremony to a close.

“...husband and husband. Live always safe inside the circle of each other.”

There was a moment’s silence. “Sss! Adam!” hissed Wensley, in a not entirely successful whisper. Adam stepped forward with the rings, looking more nervous than he ever had at Tadfield.

“Be mine,” said the angel, lifting his demon’s hand.

Adam quirked a roguish, unexpected grin at Crowley as he took up the other ring in turn. Like Pepper, he was shooting up, a young tree.

“Kiss each other now, loves.”

The wind lifted Crowley’s hair, carrying with it a whiff of the sea and the memory of gull calls. That day in Baiae when the demon had said _Come back soon, makes this work easier ‘f’I’ve got you to talk to,_ though he hadn’t looked at the angel then as he was looking now, only gazed out over the bay as if to avoid what he might do if their eyes met. It had been on the tip of Aziraphale’s tongue to say _Shall I stay then, dear? It really was on the list of optional assignments, _ which would have been, simply, a lie, but he was coming to realize how he counted on always finding the demon again too, there was no one else quite like him on earth or in heaven, what if… He’d pushed the thought away then.

Now, still holding the hand that bore his ring, he stepped closer and, shorter of the two, tilted up his head.

“My dear,” he whispered.

Crowley bent, cupping his elbow to draw him closer, and laid their lips together. Only Tracy was close enough to feel the brush of wings that no one but they could see, and she was sniffling too much to notice.

* * *

There was a quiet bustle as the plates were brought round, and jingling of spoons on glasses.

“…Aye, well, not much of a speaker, me. Only I’ve known these lads over half me life and all I can say is this is the _last _thing I expected. May ye be as happy as we are...”

“Least he got through that without saying _Southern Pansy,”_ murmured Crowley.

“I met – ahem – Anthony and Ezra at a moment when my son was – dealing with a difficult problem through no fault of his own. I’m humbled to say the support they gave him helped him get through it and they’ve left their mark on the man he’s going to become. Many blessings…”

“He should have been the one in the Diplomatic Corps,” Crowley said, to the perplexity of everyone at the table but Aziraphale. Wensley and Brian sidled past them, lighting candles and switching on strings of fairy lights with the intentness of boys who want to get their hands under the hood of everything.

He didn’t eat, only sat with lust banked in his belly, watching as the angel’s daintily quirked upper lip raked aspic off a spoon and thinking: _when we ‘re alone I’m going to do that to you._

It was astounding how much you could shiver with desire in the middle of a prim garden, surrounded by a well-wishing hum of friends and relative strangers and the pair of subdued ephebes in white uniform jackets from the caterer’s. For a lurching moment everything in his body was pulling him toward Aziraphale; it was like trying to lean out of a gale-force gust. But it wasn’t time yet, he wasn’t going to make this end, and Wensley seemed to be getting the speakers online, first a blare of feedback and then a shimmy of volume, and then the beginning again of the Shostakovich, full of syrup and glitter and extravagance, and he rose and reached for his angel and swept him away into the waltz.

They’d been practicing. Demons, as has been noted, are not known for graceful dancing, but Crowley was no one’s ideal of a demon, and he’d learned more difficult things in his time. More to the point, he knew his angel. It took only a little nudge, a sway, a pull to bring him along with his step, and when the first of the lavish _ritardandos_ came he stopped them for a moment, almost suspended on air (they were, after all, celestial beings), and then swept them around in a wheeling swirl that left the angel a little dizzy. There was scattered applause, and then Adam’s parents had joined them on the rented dance floor.

Crowley had hung in the firmament some of the stars that shone on them now, light already thousands of years old from mere pinpoints that he had seen up close, flinging off their flares and spectroscopic clouds. The man who’d composed the music to which they were dancing had doubtless borne in his body the dust of some of Crowley’s stars, and he was dust now too, and Crowley was grateful, throat-fillingly grateful for the mortals who had been able to take into themselves all that forbidding majesty, all that splendor, and inflect it with the ability to love, to feel, to dance.

Aziraphale was looking at the sky too, as it swung by him in a dizzying reel; there was the sinking light in the West, there was Venus following it, a Hope Diamond among the seed pearls of the twilight sky. She was called Venus Hesperus when she followed the sun like this; in the mornings, lifting above the horizon in the first flush of dawnlight, she was Venus Lucifer. How did Crowley feel now about following that rebel angel, swollen now with pride and hate, so different from his own demon? Had he ever been redeemable? And what had happened to Heaven? It seemed that everything worth saving and savoring was on this plane, here, right here, right here.

The waltz concluded with a Viennese pop and was followed by another, slower number. Crowley must have spent days on the mix. Aziraphale was keenly aware of the guiding hand in the small of his back, the palm under his.

“This floor contraption is going to be a bit hard on the Shadwells’ grass,” he said.

“Don’t worry, angel, I’ll whip it back into shape in the morning.”

“I’m sure you will. I shudder to think.”

“Well look at that. Madame Tracy’s gotten dibs on Newt.”

“I promised Tracy I’d make you do this,” he heard Anathema say as she circled by, dragging the reluctantly evening-clad Sergeant after her.

DebJean, wearing subdued dinner dresses that had been out of date for possibly thirty years, danced with the confident correctness of women who’d gone to an old-fashioned girls’ school in their distant youth. Both had backs as straight as drill sergeants’. “Our new neighbours are Tartars,” said Crowley. “Let’s keep on their good side. Look like the American whiskey type to me.”

“You know they’re going to start asking about your glasses soon. It’s getting dark.”

“Tracy sorted all that out. Terrible eye affliction. Poor man.” Crowley dipped; Aziraphale surprised himself by going smoothly with him.

“Isn’t it odd? We’ve always kept to ourselves, first one to one, then the two of us together, and now… neighbours. Everyday people who’ll notice when we leave and arrive. Bring us things from their gardens. Call us _Anthony _and _Ezra_.”

“I’m hoping to bring them around to _Zira_ very quickly. _Ezra_ was stuffy. I was in the court of Darius back then, I remember.”

“Were you thinking about all that when you bought this place?”

“Just wanted someplace that would be ours, angel, with a garden and a library and bedroom windows that faced away from the neighbours’. Make up the rest as we go along, can’t we?”

* * *

“Crowley! You sneaked some _bebop_ into this mix.”

“It’s classic rock. Something for the kids.”

“Well, it’s not quite so dreadful as some of the sounds that come out of those clubs in Soho nowadays.”

“Sit this one out. Get you some more of the cake.” It was possible that watching the angel eat it would make him simply discorporate, but he was willing to take the chance. They sat silently, alone at the table, hands linked on the cloth while Aziraphale took delicate bites of the ganache and raspberry jam, until something that was not a night breeze made the hairs on the back of Crowley’s neck prickle up.

“Are you noticing something?”

Celestial beings can usually tell when another of their own kind is near, though it’s not a precise thing. Crowley’s breath hesitated as the flickering sense of presence seemed to come from first one direction, then another; from overhead, from behind him. Aziraphale felt it too, and tightened his handclasp, suddenly deaf to the music, the chatter, as if a bell jar had descended over them.

A huge glittering fly, with red eyes, settled on the cake plate in which the zealous Newt had left only a scattering of crumbs. Crowley felt everything go cold inside him.

The fly lifted briefly, pirouetted in a tight circle, landed again and rubbed its forelegs together in the preening gesture that suggests a lady pulling on long gloves. It settled on one crumb of cake, then another; rose, buzzed over their heads in a spiral dance, descended next to a splash of spilled champagne and dipped its head once more.

It preened its forelegs again, then lifted a single one.

Cautiously, Aziraphale raised his flute and drank. The fly repeated the movement; it wasn’t an accident.

“You too, dear,” Aziraphale said.

Crowley’s hand shook, and the wine splashed. The fly lifted out of the way, wheeling around them with a penetrating buzz as it drew near and receded, making a last circle around their heads before disappearing.

“I do believe,” said Aziraphale, “that that’s as close as she’s going to come to dancing at our wedding. It seems to be a message, don’t you think?”

Crowley was pale, still looking upward.

"I should have told you, I got a note from MIchael."

"You damned well _should_ have told me," replied Crowley, but his words were angrier than his tone.

“I think it’s time for us to dance some more,” Aziraphale said. He was glad the mixtape had segued into a slow number, so that he could hold Crowley close as they danced, and feel the taut strings of his body loosen and his pulse even out.

* * *

Crowley’s spirits seemed to regroup – possibly because the turn he took with Tracy around the dance floor clearly made her quite giddy – and possibly, a bit, from the spectacle of Adam being taught to box step in a series of peremptory commands by flinty Deb the birdwatcher.

Mrs. Curzon, who had proved to be an aficioniado of herb gardening, was in animated converse with Anathema, the youngest Curzon already sleeping against her knee. Newt was industriously stepping on Pepper’s feet; she seemed to be bearing it bravely.

Shadwell appeared to be sharing a flask with Mr. Curzon. Well, it was at his own risk. Aziraphale saw Tracy looking fondly at the old Sergeant, handed her up onto the dance floor, where between avoiding Newt’s lurches, lack of experience in leading, and Madame Tracy’s heels, they were a bit of a spectacle themselves, but he turned with her gamely.

“I think you boys need to leave soon, don’t you?” she said. “A woman like me always knows. If you look at each other like that any longer, you’re going to catch on fire, you know.”

“One doesn’t want to be rude – “

“Go on, it’s quite late enough, you’ve been lovely to us all. I’ll take care of everything. We’ll sort it all out in the morning. Your husband’s waiting, dear.”

Crowley was leaning with one hand against the garden wall, gazing in their direction, his bow tie loosened, a bottle of champagne trailing from the other hand, Temptation in white worsted. Aziraphale’s whole body shuddered gently; Madame Tracy sensed it.

“There, see. Go on before you both scorch my grass.”

* * *

The well-wishes, the congratulations and cheek kisses – from Tracy, Anathema, and surprisingly, Pepper – came only dimly through a haze of wanting. Crowley had commandeered another bottle of Brut and carried the necks of both bottles hooked in his fingers, holding the angel’s hand on the other side. The Bentley was at the end of a narrow path to the lane. At some point, the Them had apparently slipped away and heaped the flowers in the back seat; it smelled of roses and jasmine and the faint, winey breath of irises.

They were kissing hungrily before Crowley could quite get his door shut. He’d opened his top two buttons after that last dance, and Aziraphale dipped to the notch of his collarbone, grazing with his teeth; slipped a hand down his shirt front, opening it further, to score the bony flank with his nails. Crowley pulled him awkwardly close, trying to avoid the gear lever, probing his mouth with a tongue that was there to claim territory, to fill him. He sucked breathlessly, digging his fingers in.

Crowley broke the kiss at last, touching their foreheads, breathing shakily. 

“Take us home, dear.”

It was only a short distance down the lane, but his hand was still in Crowley’s lap, feeling the hardness under the white trousers, raking a nail over the fabric. The demon whined a little as he braked outside the cottage; fumbled with the keys, slamming the door open, turning back to pull Aziraphale in and push him against the foyer wall. Lips and forked tongue flickered over his face – Crowley’s snake nature always came out at these times – and narrow hips pinned him against the chair-rail with a feverish pressure. The agile tongue roved over his neck, lips ghosting behind his ear until he had to pull away, breathing in deep shudders.

“Let’s get upstairs.”

They had left a lamp on in the bedroom. Crowley had picked out an antique mahogany bedstead, and knelt to take off Aziraphale’s shoes as the angel leaned back against the footboard.

Busy fingers worked at his trouser buttons. Crowley’s hair against his thigh tickled; his lips feathered. The tongue flicked with the lightest touch where he was already achingly hard.

“Back on the bed. I’m going to do things you can’t stand up for.”

Crowley undid the rest of the angel's shirt buttons and eased off the black trousers, pushing him down crosswise on the bed. Belatedly, he hooked off the dark glasses with one thumb and threw them in the general direction of Away. There was a clatter on the dresser.

“ ‘ll start with what you did to the aspic. Satan, I wanted to haul you away right then.”

Crowley bent, lapped over the silky tip of the angel’s cock, tracing the contours, closing lips only over the thick head as if sipping from it. Perhaps that gave him the thought; the bottles had made it up with them undamaged, somehow, and he reached to the floor to retrieve the opened one, holding it above the angel’s bared chest to release a trickle of champagne down his front.

“Oh dear, the shirt.”

“Don’t you _dare_ care about the shirt.”

There were little hisses of bubbles bursting as the trickles ran down his flanks and onto the duvet. Crowley lapped wine from the broad pink nipples, tonguing them as they puckered.

“That tickles a little. The wine.”

“Meant it to.”

He worked his way back down.

“I’m going to give you what you want, husband. What do you need? I think I know, but tell me.”

The hot mouth closed over him, drawing slowly upward, tongue teasing up his length again.

“I want you to fuck me,” said Aziraphale.

Crowley sat back, amber eyes widening. Briefly, he wondered if he had levitated. He had never heard language like that from the angel’s lips.

“Please.”

“Ah. Well, if you say _pleassse.”_ Aziraphale reached up a hand and the demon took it, sipping off the ends of the fingers one by one.

“How do you want it? Let me guess. Should I fuck that naughty little mouth of yours? When did you learn to talk like that? Here, lick.” Champagne had slopped over his fingers and he stroked them over the angel’s mouth, then bent to kiss and bite.

“No. You, inside me.”

Crowley felt a brief, almost painful tightening at the root of his cock, a swoop in his stomach.

“Well, this is a metabolism. To what do I owe?”

“Mmmhm. The dancing, I think. Feeling you – lead, showing me how you wanted me to move. I want to let you take.”

“All right. But my way.”

“Exactly, dear.”

Crowley pulled away the rest of their clothing. The angel was pink and soft-looking in the filtered light, dusted with blond hair, arms freckled, cock moist, thighs thick and fleshy. He drew a shaky breath at the thought of the weight and softness that he loved to feel bearing him down, instead open to him, receiving him.

“Nothing too fast,” he said, dipping his head again. “Your motto. You always take time to enjoy the starters, don’t you?” He lapped down the crease of one thigh, prodding his tongue into all the contours and crevasses there, pausing, resuming, tracing lips over the hair with a shivery breath, until the angel was making soft pleading noises above him, tugging at his hair, _now, please._

With his left hand he braced one soft hip, with the right pressed back between the angel’s thighs to part the plump cleft, finding the tight resistance; sank in slowly, slickness building as he needed it, curling his fingers. The angel made a wordless sound deep in his throat. Crowley lifted his head. “Make straight the way,” he said, bending again to plant little kisses from the base to the tip of the fat cock, taking it all into his mouth again.

“You talk like that to tease me, dear. We’re not exactly crying in the wilderness here –– oh!!!”

“Mmmhm.”

“And with your mouth full. – Ahhh. Manners.”

Fingers curling again. A sharp suck of breath.

“I can’t – last through all this. Please.”

Crowley knelt up then, the lamplight picking out the vivid line of hair that traced downward from his navel. “Turn then. I want that beautiful soft bum against me.”

He raked pillows down from the head of the bed – he’d made sure there were plenty – and heaped them for the angel to roll over.

“So nice and cushiony. Weight on your elbows, that’s best. Here, you push back. God, you feel good.”

“Now _you’re_ using language.”

Crowley’s hand crept around the angel’s waist.

“No – don’t touch. Please. I’m too close.”

“Mmm. Might be two of us.”

But the rhythm was like dancing, and after the first overwhelming moments, began to carry them, sweetly, a coast through the air on extended wings, a glide, a waltz. Crowley planted the heel of one hand on the angel’s broad shoulder, clasped his hipbone with the other, riding, soaring, head dropped forward so that the long red locks brushed the muscular back. At last there was a moment when he knew he’d spill over if he kept moving, and stopped, but Aziraphale didn’t, and the tight grip around him undid him. He fell against the angel’s back, arms clamped around him, gasping.

After his breathing slowed he let his hands travel.

“Mm, still not there, are you? You should have let me help. You won’t be so naughty next time, will you?”The angel rocked into the slow stroke around his cock.

“Turn toward me.”

Aziraphale rolled back against the heaped pillows – memories of Roman banquets rose unbidden, sharing a broad couch, so close he’d need only to reach out, not daring. Crowley straddled him.

“I can take you like this. Make you ask _me _ for it. Look at that beautiful thing.”

He slid up a little further over the angel’s belly.

“Fiend.”

“Yes. ...Just let me take you in, that’s right…”

He pressed palms on the angel’s shoulders, holding him down, rocking, riding. Warmth built again inside him, not enough to go again but it was good, it was _his_ angel as he had never been before, filling him, and Aziraphale’s hips bucked up twice, nearly throwing him off, and wet heat flooded into him.

“Oh, _Satan, _ I love you. Sing, angel. Sing.”

* * *

“Oh dear. I hope they didn’t hear me.”

Music was still distantly audible from the Shadwells' garden down the lane.

“ ‘S all right, angel. Managed a miracle on the fly. I could see that coming.”

“I don’t think you _saw _it actually. Unless you have undisclosed demonic powers – “

“Let’s get under the covers.”

Settling onto his side, Crowley thought to raise a hand, snap; the cleansing moistness from the warm towel quickly turned cool. Aziraphale remembered that Crowley was always cold, and pulled up the duvet. Crowley burrowed into it luxuriously.

“You’re mine now. _Husband._ Like the sound of that.”

“I was always yours. It just was a long time before I knew it.”

Aziraphale ran a finger down the demon’s sharp, serpentine spine.

“No more bad dreams.”

There was a silent moment. “Pro’lly always have bad dreams, angel. Some things you can’t help.”

“I’ll kiss them away.” He reached to settle a guiding hand against the small of the demon’s back. “Come here.”

_ Safe inside the circle of each other._

_finis_

**Author's Note:**

> The Shostakovich waltz that Crowley picks out is one of the (for his time) very modern composer's backtracks into traditional, popular styles, with just that much "over the topness" about it that you can't be sure if he's pulling your chain a little. Shostakovich, like Crowley, had a subversive, mocking streak, and was constantly getting dinged by the Communist party for political incorrectness. He used his music to blow raspberries.
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmCnQDUSO4I  
Listen and tell me if that isn’t as close a relative to the Good Omens title music as you can get in an existing classical composition. For anyone who wants to imagine the scene as I originally did (it changed in the text), Madame Tracy claims Newt for a dance partner at about 1:50 and Anathema hauls Sergeant Shadwell onto the floor at around 2:20. Forgive me my little joke.


End file.
